puerto escondido

Born in 1969 in Shimane, Japan
Lives and works between Tokyo, Japan and Hong Kong, China

Izumi Kato was born in 1969, in Shimane, Japan. He graduated from the Department of Oil Painting at Musashino University in 1992. He now lives and works between Tokyo and Hong Kong. Since 2000’s, Kato has garnered attention as an innovative artist through exhibitions held in Japan and across the world. In 2007, he was invited to the 52nd Venice Biennale International Exhibition, curated by Robert Storr.
Children with disturbing faces, embryos with fully developed limbs or ancestor spirits locked up in bodies with imprecise forms – the creatures summoned by Izumi Kato are as fascinating as they are enigmatic. Their anonymous silhouettes and strange faces with absent features are above all simple forms and strong colours. Their elementary representation, an oval head with two big, fathomlessly deep eyes shows no more than a crudely figured nose and mouth. Bringing to mind primitive arts, their expressions evoke totems and the animist belief that a spriritual force runs through living and mineral worlds alike. The aura that they exude seems to manifest the first movement of life while the intensity of their expression gives us access to a knowledge of man founded less on reason than on intuition. Embodying a primal, universal form of humanity, these magical beings invite viewers to identify themselves as if looking in a mirror.

education

1992 - Graduated from the Department of Oil Painting, Musashino Art University

Creamier, Contemporary Art in Culture

by Yukie Kamiya

An extract from "Creamer-Contemporary Art in Culture" (Phaidon)

Izumi Kato is an artist who began painting after laying down his brush. Eschewing tools, as if to reject any reliance on the flightiness of brushwork, he applies layer upon layer of sombre-hued pigment directly with his hands, not so much to paint as to rub the colour onto the canvas. In this way, he depicts creatures with human contours, two staring eyes, a head, hands and feet. Those bold, forceful curves, throwing into relief the human shape, those organic lines, that distortion and simplifying of form, are inevitable products of painting with the hands, and as a result, Kato’s works possess a powerful presence that seems to illuminate the core of the human body.

Kato was a relative latecomer to the art world, making his debut at the age of thirty. He had worked as a manual labourer for some years, which left him with the sense of being at one with the world that comes with corporeal achievement, and a humble appreciation of his place as just anther creature of this earth.

From here he set out on a new journey of engagement with the vast realm of painting. An artist who began with the abstract, he now depicts nothing but human figures. All Kato’s recent works are untitled, and he does not set up any specific model to paint; nor does he draft or sketch. These paintings have no narrative element. They are dialogues, creations arising from a direct, barely suppressible physical urge to touch, a trait given play by humans since the days of prehistoric cave murals. The figures sealed within the frame of the canvas seem to radiate an enigmatic aura, their undifferentiated bodies encased in thin membranes reminiscent of a budding life form in the embrace of its mother’s amniotic fluid. Kato’s is the act of capturing life through his body.

In 2005 Kato also turned to sculpture. Deliberately avoiding materials that are easy to mould such as clay and resin, he works only in wood, carving directly. Once again he focuses consistently on human figures, chisel marks and cracks left like idiosyncrasies of the flesh. That he always colours these roughly hewn bodies indicates that for Kato, they are in extension in his painting. Some of his works are equipped with legs or castors resembling those on desks and chairs. Echoing Brancusi perhaps,, through the pursuit of the substance of things he has arrived at the simplification of form. He also attempts to explore the possibilities of form in different materials and textures. Through the classical techniques of painting and sculpture, Kato reflects physicality, practicing an unrefined yet direct, shareable, real artistic expression in a contemporary world where virtual elements proliferate.

Yukie Kamiya, Gallery Director, Japan Society, New York

“Re-Quest – Japanese Contemporary Art since the 1970s”, 2013
Venue: Museum of Art, Seoul National University
Published by the Japan Foundation

by Iida Shihoko

Born in 1969 in Shimane Prefecture; currently lives in Tokyo. Making his debut as an artist in the mid-90’s, Kato Izumi’s work began with paintings that recalled primitive organisms such as an insect pupa or an embryo in amniotic fluid. These living creatures, which gradually assumed a more human form, gained a sense of independence in wooden sculptures that recalled a baby rising to its feet, and while posing universal questions regarding the source of life in exhibitions such as Little Boy (curated by Murakami Takashi and held at the Japan Society in New York and other venues in 2005), and the International Art Exhibition in the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, Kato displayed a grand worldview that seemed to peer into the abyss of the human condition.

Whether in his paintings or sculptures, Kato’s human figures have bloated heads and abdomens and they are out of proportion with each other, resembling a fetus that has merely increased in size while retaining its original form. They also recall some kind of organism that has passed through the evolutionary process without differentiating itself from vegetation or the earth. In recent years, Kato has begun to make works that seem to depict families consisting of men, women, and children. But as these figures maintain a sense of anonymity and never suggest a specific person, they convey the artist’s inexhaustible interest in human existence. Using a rubber spatula or his hand rather than a brush, Kato creates pictures that exude a strong color contrast with an undertone of dark brown. They possess the power, eeriness, and crudeness of an indigenous magic sculpture and embody a universal artistic practice that refuses to be packaged in the palatable trends of the current era.